Or HaChaim on Exodus 32:32/אור החיים על שמות ל״ב:ל״ב

1 ועתה אם תשא חטאתם "And now, if You are prepared to forgive their sin, etc." We have to understand this wording as corresponding to a statement in Bereshit Rabbah 21,6 according to which the word עתה is always used as related to repentance. Moses argued that seeing the Israelites had already repented, they qualified for forgiveness.

2אם תשא חטאתם "if You forgive their sin, etc." Why did Moses leave the second half of the sentence unfinished? Perhaps we must understand Moses as saying: "and now," seeing that the Israelites have already done תשובה, i.e. they have done their part, it is up to You G'd to do Your part. Moses did not know if G'd would accept repentance seeing the sin was so grave. This is why he did not complete the verse, waiting for G'd to complete the other half of the sentence.

3ואם אין מתני נא מספרן אשר כתבת "and if not, please erase me from the book You have written." A broker is entitled to a commission for all the deals he is instrumental in concluding between two parties. Inasmuch as Moses had "brokered" many deals between G'd and Israel of which the Israelites' acceptance of G'd's Torah was not the least, he was certain that his part in all this had been duly recorded in G'd's Book of records. He argued that if G'd were not to forgive the people He would have to erase all the merits Moses had acquired thus far and which had been recorded in that Book. His own merits, after all, had only been achieved through his association with the Jewish people. G'd answered him that his reasoning was faulty; He would erase only the previously recorded merits of the sinner from His Book. The merits which had been acquired through someone's association with someone else would certainly not be negatively affected through sins committed subsequently by that third party.

4Moses' argument can also be understood in light of the Zohar volume 3, page 273 that all the souls of the generation of Israelites travelling through the desert were "branches" of Moses' soul. If G'd were not to forgive the sins of the Israelites, the effect on Moses' own soul would be devastating. This is why he urged G'd to "wipe me out from Your Book." G'd answered him that only the branches of his soul would be damaged by the sins their bodies committed, not the "trunk (i.e. root) of their souls."

5Another meaning of Moses' words may be that he told G'd that he himself had been guilty of many errors such as recorded in Exodus 5,22 when he had accused G'd of dealing harshly with the Jewish people. Apparently, G'd had forgiven him his errors else He would have to erase him too from His Book as his sin too was unforgivable. G'd answered Moses that it was the nature of the sin of the Israelites,- "they sinned against Me," -which made it impossible to accept repentance without decreeing punishment. Idolatry is a sin against G'd's Essence. It cannot go unpunished even when the guilty have been truly penitent.

6The entire dialogue between Moses and G'd concerned only the timing of the forgiveness. Moses wanted G'd to display forgiveness at once so that the generation of Israelites who had committed this sin could still remain inscribed in the Book of the Righteous. As far as G'd eventually forgiving the Jewish people was concerned, he had no doubts about that. It would certainly occur not later than the Day of Atonement. Moses chose his words very carefully when he spoke about מספרך אשר כתבת, "from the Book which You have written." G'd in the Heavens has three Books. One contains the names of the righteous, another contains the names of the wicked people on earth; the third contains names of people who are considered "borderline" cases. The three Books are open in front of G'd on New Year's Day. G'd personally inscribes the names of the "righteous," the deserving people in the first Book. This is why Moses referred to that Book as "Your Book." He had to add the words "which you have inscribed," as the suffix "your" Book would not make clear whether G'd ever reviews anything written in that Book. After all, seeing the whole universe belongs to G'd, each Book in Heaven would certainly also be described as "Your Book."

7Rosh Hashanah 16 explains the words מספרך as referring to the Book in which the righteous are listed; the words אשר כתבת refer to the Book in which the borderline cases are recorded; according to the Talmud (Kidushin 40) one must always view oneself as being a borderline case, as if the next act one performs could tilt the scales of the world either towards "guilty" or towards "innocent." Berachot 61 tenders similar advice. In view of the foregoing, Moses considered himself as a בינוני, "a borderline case" just like every other Jew. If G'd were not to forgive the Jewish people, which would result in a diminution of his own merits, Moses himself would automatically lose his place in the Book of the בינונים and would become part of the Book in which the names of the wicked appear.

8Still another way of understanding this verse is that Moses argued that his own standing would become that of a righteous person if G'd were to find the Israelites as righteous, seeing most of his own merits derived from them. If G'd were to fail to forgive the Israelites, Moses would himself carry the burden of the sins of the Israelites as any merits he had acquired due to his efforts on their behalf would be considered as null and void or even worse. He would have been better off if he had never accepted the task of leading the Jewish people.

9Another aspect of Moses' argument is that it is part of his response to G'd's offer to make a new Jewish nation out of him after G'd had destroyed the present generation of Jews. Moses simply told G'd that if He were not willing to forgive the Jewish people now, he for his part would prefer to be wiped out of G'd's Book rather than become the founder of what would in effect be a substitute Jewish nation. The underlying thought here is that a) a threat by G'd not accompanied by an oath remains reversible, whereas an oath announcing retribution is irreversible. b) By the same token a promise by G'd that He will do something perceived as good, as desirable, is irreversible even if it was a conditional promise (compare Makkot 11). Accordingly, when G'd had promised to make a new nation out of Moses, this had been recorded in G'd's "Book," a book known as the Sefer Hayashar. Moses' prayer then was that G'd should cancel the entry which contained the promise to make a new nation out of his offspring. G'd told Moses that He would indeed not abrogate the promise to the Patriarachs concerning the future of their offspring while at the same time He would not retract the promise He had made to Moses. We find that He fulfilled His promise to make a nation out of Moses in Chronicles I 23, 14-18 which concludes with the statement: "the descendants of Rechaviah kept multiplying." Berachot 7 claims this means that there were more than 600,000 of Moses' descendants.